


Get Your Motor Running

by BossToaster (ChaoticReactions)



Series: For the Good Times (Shiro Week 2017) [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Back to Earth, Future Fic, M/M, Near Future, Shiro Week 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 09:23:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12814524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaoticReactions/pseuds/BossToaster
Summary: Back on Earth, Shiro clears his name and is scheduled for a proper promotion.  Despite that, he finds himself unsatisfied.





	Get Your Motor Running

Six days, hundreds of pieces of paperwork, and several migraines later, Shiro emerged from the Galaxy Garrison, once again an officially living citizen of planet Earth.

Blinking up into the blue sky, Shiro watched wispy clouds drift by and wondered why he felt nothing.

“They finally let you out, huh?”

Shiro looked over to shoot Keith a thin smile.  “Yeah.  Finally.”  He paused, searching for words that described the empty, clogged up feeling in his chest and found himself lacking.  So instead he said, “they want to promote me.”

Straightening, Keith tilted his head and looked Shiro over.  He was wearing civilian clothes, which looked odd inside the Garrison itself.  New clothes, even, bought with the money he’d apparently stashed in the cabin and had been left behind for the years they’d been gone.

It was surreal, to see Keith wearing a new Earth-style outfit after all this time.  In this building, it was equally odd not to see him wearing the cadet uniform.  It put Shiro in the mind of sneaking around, meeting up in the dead of night to try genuinely stupid tricks and to fly together.

Affection welled in Shiro, both for the people they’d been, and the man standing in front of him now.

It might well have been the first thing he’d felt since starting this whole process.

“You don’t want a promotion?” Keith finally asked.  “That sounds like a good thing for you.  They decided to count Voltron as part of your hours, then?”

Shiro gave a nod, feeling like his head was too light.  He was back somewhere he recognized so well.  But that felt so different from home.  “It makes what they have to pay me back a lot higher, but it also means an officer of the Galaxy Garrison was officially involved in recovering Voltron and defeating the Galra empire.  They’d rather pretend it was on their watch than just me directing.  It’s worth the money for the bragging rights, I think.”

“Of course they would.”  Keith rolled his eyes and shot Shiro a flat smile, inviting him to laugh alone.  But there was no response but more exhausted blinking.  Pushing off the wall, Keith finally stepped over.  “Shiro?  You didn’t answer my question.  You okay?”

“I-”  Shiro blinked at him.  “I don’t know.”

“Want to go to the cabin?”

Shiro considered, then gave a bob of his head.  Some of the oppressive blankness cracked and fell away.  “Actually?  That’d be nice.  Yeah.”

Without needing anything else, Keith nodded.  “Want to take a bike or one of the lions?”

“I don’t care,” Shiro managed, rubbing over his face.  “I really don’t. I just want-”

Shiro wanted this feeling to go away.  The numbness loomed inside, blocking everything else behind it, and Shiro still wasn’t sure why he felt like he was about to pass out.  Was he mad at the Garrison for the pilot error explanation?  Was he glad to be back?  Was he excited to be promoted?

Maybe.

But none of it felt real.  Shiro was just going through the motions and waiting for anything to touch him through the haze.

Keith was the first one to really try.  Everyone else was gone - with family, speaking to world leaders, on the castle.  Contactable, accessible, but distant.

Except Keith.

“We’ll take a bike,” Keith decided.  

Shiro nodded, shoulders relaxing as Keith helped remove the burden.  “Okay.  Sounds good.”

No one argued as they went to the docks and took one out.  There was an odd distance between the officer at the desk and the pair of them.  Like they were the brass coming in for an inspection, or a member of another branch of the military.  Us-and-not-us.  Removed.  Friendly and polite.

What else did Shiro expect of them?

Keith climbed onto the bike first, then gestured for Shiro to slip on behind him.  He did so, grateful Keith had settled up front.  If Shiro was driving, he might have run them into a wall.  

Instead, he wrapped his arms around Keith’s waist for purchase, leaned his face between Keith’s shoulder blades.  He was warm - had always been warm.  Keith put off heat like a miniature sun all his own, and it was the first thing to make Shiro feel warm in days.  He held on tight and leaned into him as they shot off. 

Keith drove the bike like it was the Red Lion, taking everything at full speed.  The wind whipped by Shiro’s ears, gritty with dust and sand, and there were no sounds besides the roar of the engine and whistle of air.

Finally, slowly, Shiro picked his head up and looked around.  The desert always had a terrible kind of beauty - stripes of reds and browns, carved into fascinating shapes by natural forces.  The shimmer in the air, catching the last rays of the sun as it started to dip past the rocks in the horizon.

Shiro had seen all of this hundreds of times before, often with Keith.  He’d driven past this exact view so many times he hadn’t looked anymore.  Maybe he never had in the first place - it was just scenery in the way of where he wanted to go.  

Now, he drank it in, and took a deep breath.

The Garrison didn’t feel real.  This did.

Shiro wasn’t sure what was different.

***

By now, Keith had brought some supplies out to the cabin.  Most important of those were the cases of beer, kept in the shade of the house but not refrigerated.  Shiro hated warm beer, but it wasn’t about the taste.  It was about climbing up on the roof of that beat-down little shack, staring up at the stars, and sipping their drinks together.

“You feel like you can talk, yet?” Keith asked, not looking over.  He was pressed against Shiro’s side, warm and steady as the temperature plummeted around them.  Neither of them were dressed for a desert night, but they didn’t make a move to head inside, either.

Shiro sighed.  “Maybe.  I don’t know.”

“That’s not like you.”

It really wasn’t.  Shiro was the talker of the two.  He pushed Keith to express himself, gave speeches to the team and alien coalitions alike, told tales of Earth to remind everyone of home.

But Shiro felt like something was wrong.  Broken.  As if the return to Earth, which should have been a cause for celebration, had cracked something instead.

“Yeah,” he finally said, because it was true and he had nothing else to give.

Keith shrugged.  “Okay.  You don’t need to talk.  Do you feel better now?”

The stars stretched over them, vast and many.  They probably hadn’t been to any of them.  Maybe a couple of those suns had a solar system the team had visited in Voltron, but for the most part they’d stayed away.  It wasn’t until Zarkon and Haggar were dead and the Galra Empire was too shattered to rise again that they’d felt comfortable bringing Earth into the picture.

“I think so,” Shiro said.  “Not like I should, though.”

Keith hummed and sipped his own beer.  His fingers tapped against the aluminum can, the noise loud in the otherwise quiet night.  “What’s should about it?  How should you feel?”

That-

Shiro wasn’t sure about that either.  But no matter the answer, it shouldn’t be like this.  It shouldn’t be ‘a nothing so strong it broke all other emotions.’

“How about this,” Keith offered, when Shiro didn’t reply.  “Would you rather stay here or go to the Garrison again?”

Slowly, Shiro’s lips curled up.  “Here.  Always.  That’s a no-brainer.”

“I mean, long term.  Do you want to go back, Shiro?”

Staring up at the night sky, Shiro took a deep breath.  “I want to want it.  I want to be the person who dreamed of the medals and promotions and becoming a commander.”

Keith stared at him, eyes just slightly luminous in the dark.  A hint at his Galra ancestry they’d both always known was there, but never known why.  “You’re not that person,” he told Shiro bluntly.

Flinching, Shiro looked back down at the ground before.  “Yeah.”

“I mean- that’s not a bad thing.  I’m not the person who dropped out.  Lance isn’t the guy who crashed the simulators because he wanted to show off.  Pidge isn’t pretending to be a guy to find her family.  Hunk isn’t throwing up during every flight simulation.  None of us are that people.  We’ve all changed.  That’s not a bad thing.”

“No,” Shiro agreed softly.  “It’s not.  It’s just… sad.”

Keith nodded thoughtfully.  “Yeah.  I can see that.”  He sipped his beer, gaze distant.  “It doesn’t matter though.  You know?  Like, you wanted it once.  At the time, it was a big deal.  But what does it mean for you now?”

Nothing.  It was meaningless.  A feather in the Garrison’s cap, that they could claim ownership over Shiro’s actions and command, since they’d trained him.  Fine.  What did it do for Shiro?

“You’re right,” he agreed.  “It’s not worth what it would have been.  It’s more to them than to me.  But shouldn’t it mean at least something to come home and be welcomed?  To clear my name?”

Keith shrugged.  “If does or it doesn’t.  You can’t force it.”

Groaning, Shiro flopped back on the roof.  The hand without a beer spread out over his stomach as he went back to watching the stars.  By now, he found himself looking for different constellations.  Altean ones, or the sets they’d made up around different planets.  There were a series of six in a oval shape that looked like the Teleduv Constellations he and Pidge had mutually agreed on above Olkarion.

These were the stars he knew.  Even now, Shiro could pick out the actual constellations with ease.  But it wasn’t his instinct to look for those anymore.  It had been so long he had to remind himself they were there.  These stars used to mean home, used to mean adventure, used to mean someday.

Now they were an echo.  They weren’t even comforting anymore, like the memory of them had been in those first few months.  They weren’t his normal, anymore.  The made-up constellations above Okarion meant ‘we all came back.’  The ones that encircled the Blade’s headquarters meant diplomacy and allies. 

These…

“Earth isn’t home anymore,” Shiro finally said softly.  “It doesn’t feel like anywhere.  Shouldn’t it?”

Keith shrugged, laying out next to him.  “Doesn’t feel like it for me either,” he offered.  “Do you want it to?  You could go see your family or something.”

Crinkling his nose, Shiro closed his eyes.  “I should.”

“That’s not ‘I want to’.”

“No, it’s not.”

Because Keith understood, he just nodded and didn’t press.  “You could go with the Holts too.  Didn’t Pidge say they were going to go traveling?  That’d be good.  Appreciate this planet a little.  Feel connected to it again.”

That wasn’t the worst idea.  Except that Dr. Holt had been alone for years, and her family had finally returned.  Shiro wasn’t about to go sticking his nose in their reunion.  “I’m not going to interrupt everyone,” he finally said.  “Maybe for a bit.  I’d like to tell Mat and Pidge’s Mom some stories.  I think she’d appreciate that.  Lance and Hunk’s family as well.  They should get to hear what heroes their children are.”

“That’d be nice,” Keith agreed.  “But I hear ‘should’ again.”

Dammit.

What did Shiro want?  What did he desire, outside of the trappings of his duty?

“I want to see more,” Shiro said.   His eyes tracked over the stars, settling on the bright dot of Mars.  “And- Earth would be good.  But that’s not all it is.  That’s not everywhere we can be.”

Keith turned his head, brow furrowed.  “What do you mean?”

Turning, Shiro faced Keith and offered him an easy smile, the first since they’d landed on this planet.  “Want to go on a joy ride?”

“Always.”  Keith turned onto his side, facing Shiro properly.  There was a hint of a smile to his lips, that gentle warmth to his eyes that meant he was happy because the people he cared about were happy.  Or, at least, getting close to it.  “Where are we going?”

We.  Always.  Shiro’s smile softened, warmed by how on board Keith was.  Impulsively, he reached out and took Keith’s free hand, his left palm to Keith’s right.  Then he lifted both, pointing them to the moon.  “There.  And there.”  He moved their joined hands to the red dot of Mars.  “Titan too, see those oceans.  Pass by Neptune, run Black’s paws through Saturn’s rings.  Go to Kerberos and bring the Garrison their damn sample.  Make Matt have a heart attack when he sees we just took a bite out of the moon and called it a night.”

Keith let out a burst of laughter, wild and eager.  “Yeah.  Let’s do it.”  He squeezed Shiro’s hand and seemed to have no desire to let go.  

So Shiro didn’t.  He just grinned back, feeling-

Young.  Like they were just students, just people.  Like they hadn’t had the weight of the universe on their shoulders for far too long.

Like duty wasn’t the only thing keeping them moving forward anymore.

Like Shiro had a choice.

One he used to pull Keith in by the arm and give him a kiss.  It tasted of warm, stale beer and a hint of sand from the desert wind.

It also tasted like heat and passion and all that burned inside o Keith.

Pulling away, Keith took in a surprised breath, hair messy in the wind and lips pulled back in a wild grin.  “You want to go now?”

Shiro considered, looking back toward the Garrison and their lions, and then at Keith’s lips.  “Tomorrow morning,” he decided.  “Want to go inside?”

“Yes,” Keith said back, nearly breathless.  He sounded like he’d been waiting years for Shiro to ask something like that.

Shiro just smiled back and gave him another kiss, this time softer.  Almost an apology.

It had taken him a long time, true.  But Shiro had a choice now.  He could see past ‘should’ for ‘want.’

Tomorrow, they would take a trip and appreciate the solar system that they came from.

Tonight, they would appreciate each other.


End file.
